this puzzles me. it would seem that if the polar ice caps melting would flood the earth, why doesn’t a glass overflow when icecubes melt. now this would only apply if the majority of the ice mass is underwater. and if it does melt, the sun being the hottest it has been in over 6,000 years could have something to do with it.

Melting polar Ice caps will not flood the earth..
Environmentalist hype is search of Govt. research funding…

Bullfrogon November 30th, -0001

it’s called evaporation.

CherryBerryon November 30th, -0001

fill the cup to the brim, then add lots of ice- it should overflow. What is the temp of the water you were experimenting with?

GiddyUpon November 30th, -0001

there is not enough ice in a glass. The polar ice that melts is on land runs into the water. if you fill a glass with ice it will not over flow but if you fill the glass with ice and fill your hand enough times and let it melt your glass will over flow. try it

Stareon November 30th, -0001

Because one of the polar ice caps is on Antarctica. Antartica is a continent which means there is land under the ice, therefore the ice doesn’t displace the water as it does in a glass of water. If all the ice were in the water it wouldn’t flood but most of the ice is on land like Antartica and Greenland

Salingeron November 30th, -0001

if you adjust the level in a glass by adding an icecube, it’ll surely not overflow, because the volume captured by ice under water and the volume of the water in the icecube are equal. but if you add an icecube in a fufilled glass, it’ll surely overflow.

in the cases of polar ice-caps, if the temperature in the poles increase from the present level, the ice’ll melt. and the polar ice caps are not adjusted to the sea level, it rather follows the second case.

Russon March 23rd, 2011

The sun isn’t any hotter, increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have intensified the greenhouse effect, causing the earth’s average temperature to rise, leading to the ice caps melting. Second, the ice on Greenland and Antarctica are on land. They aren’t in the glass. The average depth of the ice over Antarctica is over a mile thick. Just adding that would add 7.956 × 10^18 gallons of water to the ocean. Greenland is a similar story although not as much water. The ice that’s floating in the arctic ocean won’t have an effect on sea level because it is already displacing the water.

Andrzejon June 29th, 2011

It isn’t ALL environmentalist hype looking for funding. It is a proven fact that sea level rose approximately 8 inches in the 20th Century. Not too frightening, but an acceleration in the melting of the polar caps over the norm. The changes are due to natural events (the same things that ended the last Ice Age)…but pure logic says 8 billion people emitting heat from their cars, houses, etc will impact the planet a lot more than less than one billion–the usual population before the Industrial Revolution. (Take all the people who lived prior to 1900–all of them in all time period from the caveman thru the Victorian era. There are more people alive today, June 29, 2011 than all of them added together. How can that NOT have an impact on the planet?)

But in regard to your question: First, the ice in your glass is floating IN the water and therefore, already displacing it’s own volume (actually a bit more than its volume) in the glass. By melting, it doesn’t add anything to the glass.

The ice on Earth is almost all located on land, therefore it is not displacing its own volume in the ocean. When it melts, it automatically flows toward the lowest point possible, so in general, it drains out into the ocean.

However, your initial premise is wrong. Melting polar ice caps will not (entirely) flood the earth–forget Kevin Costner and Waterworld. If ALL the ice on the planet melted, it would raise sea level by about 230 feet. This means the coast of every continent would flood and some islands would be lost entirely. Yes, a lot of coastal land would be submerged. We would lose all of Florida, for example. Houston would be flooded, Dallas wouldn’t.

There would still be habitable land, but aside from flooding, there would be a lot lost due to the salting (by seawater) of the rich coastal plains that are some of the planet’s best farmland. A rise of just 6 feet in sea level could cause us to lose cities like Miami, New Orleans, or San Francisco. Some could be saved with extraordinary human effort (and expense), others would probably have to be abandoned. If you get the chance, watch the National Geographic channel special called “Earth Under Water”.

Turner Echolson August 14th, 2011

Because all the ice is not in the water.

zeuson November 11th, 2011

becose there is a land mass under the cap

chris wiegardon January 4th, 2012

The arctic ice cap is in fact floating on top of the ocean, so when it melts away it will have no effect on sea levels. HOWEVER- there is a deep ice sheet on top of the Greenland land mass, and an even deeper one on top of the Antarctic continent. If both those sheets were to melt completely, the resulting liquid water would pour DOWN into the world ocean, increasing sea level by over 100 feet and thereby putting every major coastal city under water. it’s not a joke. and no, global warming is not a joke either.

LUKEon January 9th, 2012

Has it occurred to anyone that us going through ice-ages etc is just the result of the solar-system having seasons too? Just because they may be 100,000 years apart, doesn’t mean the solar system doesn’t experience what we do on earth just on a galactic level.

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